1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a component transfer device and method for taking out a component accommodated in a rack (or a magazine, a cassette, and the like) to be supplied to a supply area, and more particularly to a component transfer device and method for taking out a component having a plate-like shape such as a printed board, a liquid crystal substrate, a glass substrate or a thin-plate tray.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a conventional component transfer device, there is known a substrate supply device that includes a tote box moving means for horizontally and vertically moving a substrate tote box that accommodates printed substrates on a plurality of stages, a substrate fetching means for fetching the printed substrates from the substrate tote box one by one, and others, and that sets the substrate tote box at a predetermined position, moves up and down the same step by step to position each printed substrate at a predetermined fetch position, takes out the printed substrates one by one by using the substrate fetching means, and supplies them to a supply area (e.g., an implementer or an examiner) on a downstream side (see, e.g., Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 9-331191).
In this device, as the substrate fetching means, there are adopted one including an arm portion that causes a protrusion to be caught on an innermost edge portion of a printed substrate from a lower side of the printed substrate and rakes out the printed substrate from the substrate tote box, one having an arm portion that sandwiches a front side of the printed substrate from the vertical direction and pulls out the printed substrate from the substrate tote box, and one including an arm portion that enters from a slit provided on a side surface of the substrate tote box on an opposite side of a fetch direction and pushes out the printed substrate from the substrate tote box.
However, when applying the arm portion that causes the protrusion to be caught on the innermost edge portion of the printed substrate and rakes out the printed substrate as the substrate fetching means in this device, the arm portion must be set to be longer than a length dimension of the substrate (the substrate tote box) in the fetch direction, a size of the device thereby increases, and a driving mechanism for moving up and down the arm portion (the protrusion) is required besides a driving mechanism that reciprocates the arm portion, resulting in complication and increase in size of the device.
Further, when applying the arm portion that operates to push out the printed substrate as the substrate fetching means, the arm portion must be set to be longer than a length dimension of the substrate (the substrate tote box) in a thrusting direction, thereby increasing a size of the device.
Furthermore, when applying the arm portion which sandwiches the front side of the printed substrate from the vertical direction and pulls out the printed substrate as the substrate fetching means, a configuration, a driving mechanism and others that allow this arm portion to perform an operation for sandwiching the printed substrate are not clear, and contents that can be specifically carried out are not disclosed.